Throughout the rest of our session, Trigg told me stories about her pandemic senior year and was excited to share with me her desire to have a career in law enforcement.
“I want to be one of the good cops,” she told me. “I’ve wanted to work in that field since I was in middle school.”
Not in my wildest dreams did I think the next time I’d see this inquisitive and sassy teenager that it would be via a frantic Facebook Live video.
Trigg and her younger cousin had an argument that faithful Tuesday afternoon in late July. The issue surrounded a demand that Trigg remove pictures of two late family members from Instagram. These beloved family members played significant roles in each of the teens’ lives, so emotions were high. According to Ray, her daughter’s feelings were hurt and she simply no longer wanted to ride in the car. Leaving behind her Crocs, she angrily exited the vehicle on Ranch Road in tears.
“Kia is very emotional,” Ray explains. “Sometimes her way of dealing with confrontation is to walk away.”
Ranch Road is one of the more rural looking two-lane roads in Forney, with one lane going in each direction. What one might consider an older and original neighborhood of the city sits at the end of Ranch Road.
Cars often speed down this street, ignoring the posted speed limit signs. There is no sidewalk on the right side, but the newer residential neighborhoods are in view. Trigg’s only options when she exited the car were to walk in the grass or to walk on the edge of the road. Either way, she would have to cross this main road to head in the direction of home.
That’s exactly what the 18-year old did in the five o’clock hour. She had to walk down Ranch Road for a good bit, partially in the street, before coming to a familiar cross street that would take her into the neighborhood.
Without shoes, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, with only her cell-phone - the teary eyed teenager headed home. At some point, passing motorists made calls to 911, reporting that a young woman was attempting suicide by walking in a busy street. One caller remained on the line with a 911 operator; describing Nekia’s every move.
“I listened to a good portion of one of the calls,” Ray shares. “The person on the call describes Kia walking next to a long field, walking past a school, turning on a street, walking near some construction and then finally turning into a community. My daughter isn’t aware that her actions are being described to a 911 dispatcher – she doesn’t know that you think she’s trying to hurt herself. She’s just walking.”
Two days after the viral video caused a flurry of both concern and debate; police body cam footage was released to the public. The footage picks up with Trigg walking through a neighborhood, not on the aforementioned main road. The officer to approach Trigg has been identified as Kaufman County Officer Connor Martin. He can initially be heard speaking to Trigg calmly. He asks her what’s wrong, to which she replies, “I’m fine.” She is crying and visibly upset. He proceeds to follow her, inquiring about her address and why she is walking without shoes.
More than once, Trigg tells the officer that she is fine and simply wants to go home. She can be heard saying, “I don’t want you to hurt me.” Martin responds, “I’m not going to hurt you,” while grabbing the teenager’s right arm.
Almost 90 seconds into the video, Martin finally reveals to Trigg that they have received calls that she was trying to hurt herself. She denies such and asks to call her mom and then her sister. Martin still has her right arm in his grip, while she tries to operate her phone with her left hand. Her cries intensify.
While on the phone with her sister, Trigg begins to scream, “you’re hurting me” as Martin appears to tighten his grip on her arm. Around the 2:05 mark of the video, Trigg’s head jerks to the right of the screen and Martin’s hand can be seen on her ponytail. Seconds later she is on the grass and her cell phone underneath her.
“She probably called her sister, because she thought that I was still at work,” Ray says. “She calls Jada, who is at home a few minutes away. To pull up and see Jada, who is always calm and collected looking so upset – I knew that something was wrong. Her eyes were huge and she was moving around so nervously. She pointed to the phone and told me it was Kia and that the police had her.”
In that moment, Ray, Jada and a friend sped off in Ray’s car – all nervous because the last thing they heard Trigg say before her phone fell to the ground was “he’s hurting me.” The women only knew where to go, because Trigg casually said “I’m on (friend’s name) street.
In these developing tense moments, Ray still had a sense of calmness about her. “I just knew it couldn’t be too serious. I’m thinking the whole time - my child isn’t bad, she’s not crazy, she couldn’t have done anything too major. We turned down the street and I see no one, no cars, no people, nothing. When I finally saw the police car, I parked far away from it, not wanting the officer to think I’m pulling up on him aggressively.”
Once out of her car, Ray says she purposely walked far left of the police car hoping to get the officer’s attention without alarming him. Ray adamantly told Jada and Jada’s friend, who emerged from the backseat and were walking behind her not to walk up on the police car.
“At that point, I still didn’t see anything,” Ray says. “All of a sudden I hear Jada yell Get off of my sister. I turned in the direction of her screams and I see the officer in the grass. I get a little closer and I see that he’s on top of my child. Something I’ve never felt took over me. I didn’t have any thoughts in my head, but to go in the direction of my child. When I got close, something else took over me.”
It was the weirdest calming sensation Ray can recall in her life. Probably every emotion humanly possible was overtaking her body, but a spirit of composure took over her mind and instantly made her play out all of the possible scenarios if she chose to react, over responding.
“I thought it best to get down on the ground and try to look at him in his eyes,” she says. “I wanted him to see me and know that I’m not just some random person running up on him. I wanted him to know that I was her mother and that I wanted to assist him in deescalating whatever the issue was.”
In a moment that Ray says she’ll never forget, the officer pushed off of her daughter, looked at her and yelled, “Get back.” His face was red.
“He scared me,” Ray admits. “All I could think was to turn and tell my daughter’s friend to keep recording.”
If you’ve known Ray for more than five minutes, you’ve learned that she is a very low profile woman. She is about her children, her business and improving “self.” The fact that her name and her daughter’s trauma are now being broadcast for the world to critique has left her unsettled to say the least.
Since social media became a thing, Ray says she can’t even think of an instance where she was pressed to record and post drama for the sake of followers and likes. The events of July 27, 2021 were not recordings she wanted to follow her for the rest of her life.
“My children will tell you, I’ve always told them not to get caught up on some embarrassing recording,” she explains. “But in this moment, something told me that I would need proof of what was unfolding. That lawn felt like a deserted island during those moments. It was me and my children against an armed police officer and I didn’t know if the scene would end with us dead and him left to tell the story. So many things went through my mind. If he killed us, I wanted him to have to get up and delete the recording off of the phone and maybe a street camera to capture him doing it.”
In the seven minute long video, there appears a woman of Middle Eastern decent. She is obviously concerned. While the officer barks commands at Ray, he calmly dismisses that woman's every attempt to intervene. This woman could not be reached for an interview, but her presence is ever so important.
“She was livid,” Ray says about the mystery woman. “I was so happy she appeared and that she seemed to be on our side. People keep saying the officer said nothing to her, but he did – he was just polite to her. Even after this woman reached in and touched the officer, he was calm in telling her to get back.”
At one point in the recording, a Forney police officer appears. According to Ray, who was within earshot of the two officers’ exchange – that second officer tucked his head down toward Martin and urged him to get off of Trigg more than once.
“He told him no,” Ray recalls. “At that point I remember the Forney cop tapping his belt as if to say get up. That second officer’s entire demeanor suggested he knew the whole scene was bad and that he didn’t want any part of this.”
Unfortunately, it is the officer’s position on top of Trigg that we must continue to revisit. It was uncomfortable to watch. She wasn’t fighting her way up. She wasn’t hitting him. She was crying, as the officer lay atop her for an extended period of time. Still, Ray approached the officer with respect for his position. She didn’t want him to feel intimidated by her presence. She tried to reason with him.
“I could’ve walked up with an attitude, cursing at him from the moment I saw him on top of my daughter,” she says. “I really thought he would have some compassion if I got down in a non-intimidating position. I wasn’t trying to stop him from detaining her – I just wanted him to talk to me.”
Her efforts didn’t work. Her calmness didn’t redirect the altercation. Ray soon found herself in the middle of the street and muffed in the face by that same officer. Seconds after that, he was on top of her just like he’d spent minutes on top of her daughter.
The second officer pulled out handcuffs; Ray believes to expedite Officer Martin removing himself from Trigg. When the teen was finally upright and in handcuffs, she expressed that the handcuffs were too tight. Confused as to why her daughter was being arrested, Ray walked alongside towards the police car, removing grass from her daughter’s hair and inquiring about what was to come next. With Trigg still crying and complaining of discomfort from the cuffs – Ray once again tried to console her.
Martin abruptly let go of Trigg and insisted that Ray tried to grab her daughter. Ray remembers his hand hitting her in the forehead, she backtracks and within the blink of an eye - she was on the concrete with him on top of her.
“He tussled with me, but never raised his fist to hit me,” Ray explains. “The camera doesn’t completely follow, because Jada’s friend turns to stop Jada from coming to my rescue.”
Even on the ground, Ray can be heard screaming to her children to get back. A third officer extended his taser in the direction of Jada, her friend and the woman from the neighborhood. Ray says she completely understands his actions to try to bring order to the moment. That officer, according to Ray was also incredibly compassionate as the ordeal played out.
“His face told me that he was so sorry all of this was happening.”
Despite pleas not to be placed in the car with the arresting officer, Ray found herself taking a ride to the police station with none other than Officer Martin. Trigg was transported to a mental facility and released 15 minutes later, showing no signs of suicidal tendencies.
Ray spent 22 hours in the Kaufman County Jail. She was charged with Aggravated Assault on a Police Officer, as well as Interference with Public Duty of a Peace Officer. Her prayer is that all charges are removed, as the upstanding member of society has always tried to set the right example for her children and to be a model business owner.
“I don’t have a record. I’ve never been to jail,” Ray explains. “I see the comments online. People want to attack my character and make it seem like I had this coming. Failure to maintain financial responsibility and driving without a license are the two tickets I’ve had.”
While there are obvious undertones of racism to this story, Ray chooses not to utter the “R” word. “I know that’s what people want me to do,” she says. “My feelings would be the same if a Black officer did this to my daughter.”
Many of the people advocating online for the officer, however, saw a white officer emphatically enforcing his authority on a Black woman. He put her in her place. He kept her in line. He shamed her. He humiliated her. For many of his supporters – he is worthy of celebration.
Seriously, we show more courtesy for mass murderers in this country. This was a teenager in despair.
Maybe this is not so much an issue of race, but more so an issue of wrong. Optics are important in our current world moreso than ever. Martin could see that he was being recorded and wasn’t phased enough to remove himself from Trigg. Even when other officers arrived, the male officer saw no urgency in removing himself from the young woman.
Several times during our chat, Ray acknowledges that had her daughter actually been suicidal and the officer attempted to perform life saving strategies – she would understand the need to strappingly detain her until additional help arrived. The street, however, where Martin confronted Trigg was desolate. She was walking and crying. Could the officer not have walked with her, while awaiting backup? Perhaps he could have followed her home.
It took more than one week for Ray to even watch the video. The moment when Martin appears to pull Trigg by her hair infuriates Ray to the point of tears.
“Initially I wanted him to be reprimanded, forced to do more training and to issue an apology,” Ray shares. “Now that I see him pulling my child’s hair and throwing her to the ground – I think he should lose his job. That’s hard for me to say, because I never threaten anyone’s livelihood. I know how that feels – but he was wrong. My daughter didn’t deserve that.”
To add insult to trauma, Ray and her family have been at the center of the looming court of public opinion. The sexual nature of Martin’s position on top of Trigg has Internet predators creating fake accounts and sending sexually suggestive comments to the 18-year old.
The family no longer feels comfortable in Forney, an area that although has a growing Black population is still home to many residents who don’t appreciate the change. Since this story broke, many Black families have shared their respective stories of racism, false reports made on neighborhood forums and uncomfortable interactions with police.
Trigg is not as vocal as her older siblings. She often elects to text her mom when something is bothering her. Right now, she is quiet. Her family knows that she is both confused and hurt and they’re allowing her time to process what she has experienced.
Everyone seems to have a “She Should Have” rhetoric following last Tuesday’s unfortunate events.
According to the social media experts:
She should have been home. “Why was she walking around in the heat?” She should have walked with someone. “She knows they don’t like Black people being out there in Forney – why did she think she could walk around like that?” She should have not been barefoot. “She made herself look suspicious – where were her shoes?” She should have stopped and talked to the officer. “When will they learn to just do what the officer says?” She should not have reached for her daughter. “Why did she think she could get that close?” She should have demanded the officer get off of her daughter. “I would’ve gone to jail if I saw him on top of my child like that – why was she so passive?”
Yes, Ray grew angry during the video. Yes, she hurled some expletives later in the video. What she maintains she did not do was touch the officer.
So what exactly is the procedure when you find your daughter, a child born unto you, flesh of your flesh – being mounted by a police officer? She’s crying, foaming at the mouth and uttering the words I can’t breathe – what do you do in that moment?
Antanique Ray should have done what exactly?
Perhaps she should not have been Black.
